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Despite the critical need for urban planners to address climate change, there is a limited understanding of planning professionals’ perceptions of their climate change competency. This paper reports results from a survey of Australian urban planning professionals, identifying their perceived climate change knowledge, skills, competencies, and everyday practice. The urban planning professionals surveyed had high levels of perceived climate change knowledge, but only a small number incorporate...

This paper investigates the use of dilated causal convolutional neural networks for fine-grained temporal forecasting of building zone states. Specifically, we build and evaluate models using a small set of exogenous features (e.g., external temperature) to autoregressively predict zone airflow setpoints every minute for a 24-h prediction window. We carefully explore the trade-off between generality and specificity in these models, training and evaluating them based on zone, zone type,...

Background: Climate changes (CC) is one of the most important insidious crises affecting all countries in the world in the 21st century, including Algeria, and it is projected to affect many people in the future. Mitigation of the effects of this phenomenon will certainly involve environmental education, especially among university students. Therefore, evaluating their level of knowledge could help us understand to what extent they are prepared to contribute in the global efforts to fight...

Abstract Aim To assess knowledge, perception, and practices regarding climate change (CC) among university students and to investigate the relationships between knowledge levels and reported practices in response to CC. Subject and methods A cross-sectional study was conducted among 768 undergraduate students from the practical and theoretical faculties of Al-Azhar University for Girls in Cairo. Results Most (82.6%) students had heard the term CC and believed it affected their communities....

Natural-language processing is well positioned to help stakeholders study the dynamics of ambiguous Climate Change-related (CC) information. Recently, deep neural networks have achieved good results on a variety of NLP tasks depending on high-quality training data and complex and exquisite frameworks. This raises two dilemmas: (1) the networks are highly reliant on powerful hardware devices and processing is time-consuming, which is not only inconducive to execution on edge devices but also...

The physical characteristics of a child’s learning environment can affect health, wellbeing and educational progress. Here we investigate the effect of classroom setting on academic progress in 7–10-year-old students comparing reading development in “open-plan” (multiple class groups located within one physical space) and “enclosed-plan” (one class group per space) environments. All learning conditions (class group, teaching personnel, etc.) were held constant throughout, while physical...

The revolution of the industry 4.0 presents a new era of digital transformation for the construction industry, advancing towards the concept of digital twins, while on the other hand it faces the global challenge of reducing carbon emissions from operational assets. The current research gap in the application of digital twins for achieving net zero were reviewed in this study, highlighting its potentials for enhancement in the built environment, and emphasizing the need for demonstration of...

Schoolchildren are a high-risk population, and their exposure to air pollution at school has been documented in high-income countries. As a result, school siting policies to protect children from air pollution have been established in those countries. Such policies are, however, non-existent in Africa where the air pollution problem is growing and gravely under-studied due to the lack of funding to install reliable ground-level monitoring networks and lack of air quality standards. The...

Abstract We conducted a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed full text articles on the nexus between human mobility and drought or heat published between 2001 and 2021, inclusive. We identified 387 relevant articles, all of which were analysed descriptively using a dictionary-based approach and by using an unsupervised machine learning–based Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model. Most articles were in response to droughts (71%), but heat and extreme temperature became more...

Climate change is the greatest public health threat of the 21st century. Moreover, people with the lived experience of disabilities, a population physiatrists commonly treat, are among the most vulnerable to acute disasters such as floods and wildfires and excessive heat. In this position statement, we recommend actions that physiatrists and rehabilitation professionals should take at micro, meso, and macro levels to assist in mitigation and adaptation to the effects of climate change on the world.

Abstract Background Earlier reviews documented the effects of a broad range of climate change outcomes on sleep but have not yet evaluated the effect of ambient temperature. This systematic review aims to identify and summarize the literature on ambient temperature and sleep outcomes in a warming world. Methods For this systematic review, we searched online databases (PubMed, Scopus, JSTOR, GreenFILE, GeoRef and PsycARTICLES) together with relevant journals for studies published before...

Thermal comfort in learning environments influences the student’s focus and learning productivity. This study aims to evaluate and compare the adaptive thermal comfort of schoolchildren and their teachers in naturally ventilated primary schools in some selected cities in Imo State Nigeria. To achieve these objectives, the study analyzed the data collected from 330 pupils and 44 teachers in six surveyed classrooms in two types of classroom buildings. The recorded data in the surveyed...

Indoor light quality is the intensity and amount of illumination of interior spaces. Technological developments have led to the utilisation of artificial natural light. Illumination is crucial in the visibility of tasks. Quality of light can influence the visual comfort and ocular health of the students. Although Kenya lacks lighting standards for schools, ISO and CIE provide international guidelines on optimal illumination for various facilities. This study was conducted on public boarding...

Climate change is an area that is currently in dire need of a wide range of publicity especially among teachers in secondary schools. This is because teachers’ awareness of Climate Change may result to multiplier effects where families and communities benefit when students share what they have learned especially in relation to causes, adaptation and mitigation. The study was therefore carried out to assess the extent of climate change awareness among secondary school teachers in Ebonyi...

Climate change phenomena, such as droughts, floods, heat waves, hurricanes, and wildfires, have a deleterious effect on nature and the health of the people, especially on vulnerable population cohorts, such as persons with disabilities (PwD). PwD are disproportionately affected by the health effects of climate change and experience a greater burden due to various physiological, socio-economic and health-related factors. Rehabilitation professionals as trusted care providers/educators have an...